This invention relates to a flexible pouch or bag of plastic material especially designed for granular or viscous products, and more particularly to such a flexible pouch having a reinforced handle enabling the filled bag to be gripped and manipulated with ease.
The prior art discloses, as for example, through U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,302,860 and 3,440,124, griphole carrying bags having separate reinforcing elements secured as by heat sealing to external surfaces of both front and back panels of the bag along the edge of each griphole formed in the front and back panels. External reinforcing elements of such type, however, are costly to produce inasmuch as a pair of such elements are required for each bag and may interfere with high speed production operations in the manufacture of the bags and the assembly of such reinforcing elements. The external reinforcements prevent bags during the production operation from lying flat one on top of the other which may interfere with ease in handling. Moreover, the external reinforcement elements could interfere with handling the equipment during bag production and are moreover susceptible to being dislodged from the front and back panels during various stages of the production.
Internal reinforcements for bag gripholes are disclosed in French patent 2,592,561 in that reinforcement bars extending substantially along the entire width of the bag are encased in turned-over, open, upper portions of the front and back panels of the bag and are sealed in place immediately above the upper edge of a griphole in the front and back panels. Again, however, a pair of reinforcement bars is required for each bag thereby adding to the cost and the complexity of production. Moreover, since the reinforcement bars are encased in turned-over upper portions of the front and back panels of the bag before being sealed in place, such an operation is time-consuming and costly in the production of such bags which may not be of the reusable type such that low cost is a major factor in the production and successful commercialization of the bags.